Minnesota gay marriage supporters rally at Capitol

Hundreds of people gathered at the state Capitol in St. Paul for a Valentine's Day rally on Thursday, Feb. 14, 2013, urging legislators to pass legislation supporting the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry. (Pioneer Press: Ben Garvin)

Correction: Paul Fleege's name was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.

Hundreds of people joined religious leaders and a throng of Democratic lawmakers in the Capitol Rotunda for a Valentine's Day rally marking the public kickoff for the push to legalize gay marriage in Minnesota.

State Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, said he plans to introduce a bill to authorize same-sex marriage in a week or so.

"I'm asking you to be brave again," Dibble told the crowd, many of whom were likely part of the campaign last fall that defeated an effort to write man-woman marriage into the state constitution.

"It is time for a conversation and (to) build a relationship with your legislator. Show them how much this matters," Dibble said.

The rally was the first of two expected at the Capitol over gay marriage. No official count of Thursday's crowd was immediately available, but it appeared to exceed 1,000 people.

Minnesota for Marriage, the main group opposing the effort, is planning its own gathering March 7.

At Thursday's rally, Grant Stevensen, a Lutheran pastor in St. Paul and former faith director for Minnesotans United for All Families, the lead pro-gay-marriage group, said that after Minnesota made history by blocking the marriage amendment, the question became when state law would be changed to allow gays and lesbians to marry.

"I believe the answer to us has become clear: Now!" Stevensen said.

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He led the crowd in a chant that served as a kind of refrain for the day: "Now is the time! This is the year!"

People filled the Rotunda and parts of adjacent hallways and staircases. More packed the second and third levels to watch from above.

Two women held a sign saying "After 22 years together, aren't we worthy of being married?" Another sign said, "My daughter is not a 2nd class citizen."

Barbara Ford of Minneapolis went with her husband, Ken, "to support the right of anyone to marry who they love. It's a right that we all should have."

The Fords have a daughter who married her partner in Canada, and Barbara Ford said Minnesota is ready to legalize same-sex marriage, "given how they voted to defeat the amendment. I hear from a lot of people that the time is right now."

Paul Fleege of St. Paul was standing on the balcony in a red T-shirt that said "Marry Me/Equal Love/Equal Rights."

Fleege, who is gay, said he came Thursday to lend his voice to securing "the opportunity to get married and actually be recognized by both the state and society as an equal versus a second-class citizen that 'Oh, we might throw you civil unions, if even that.' And also because it's time. It's time for Minnesota to pass this.

Hundreds of people arrived at the state Capitol for the Valentine's Day rally. (Pioneer Press: Ben Garvin)

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Nine other states and the District of Columbia allow gay marriage. On Thursday, the Illinois Senate voted in favor of legalized gay marriage.

Minnesota achieved a note of distinction this past Election Day when it became the first state to defeat a proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as only the union of a man and woman. (Arizona defeated such a measure but then adopted it two years later.)

Gay-marriage advocates say their plan is to convert the energy that went into the amendment campaign -- described by many as the largest grass-roots campaign in Minnesota history -- into a lobbying push that will persuade lawmakers to give same-sex couples the same marriage rights as heterosexuals.

"In November, we said with a clear voice we do not want to limit the freedom to marry in the state of Minnesota. Unfortunately, state law still does that," said Jake Loesch, spokesman for Minnesotans United.

Minnesotans United is doing phone banks, planning house parties and gathering names on petitions to help take the message to legislators. DFLers hold the majority in the House and Senate, but some from conservative districts will likely feel pressure to oppose gay marriage.

Minnesotans United is focusing its attention on rural Democrats in districts where a majority favored the marriage amendment, and also on suburban Republicans in districts that voted "no," Loesch said.

"Those are general areas where we know that lawmakers and their constituents may be at odds on this, and so we really want to make sure that we highlight those and get those constituents talking to their lawmakers."

Minnesota voters are split about evenly on the question of legalizing gay marriage, with 47 percent in support and 45 percent opposed, according to a poll last month by North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The main group opposing gay marriage in Minnesota said Thursday that the pro side is mistakenly assuming that opposition to the amendment at the ballot box last fall will translate into support for gay marriage at the Capitol this spring.

"What actually the voters said was let's keep the status quo on our marriage law; that's what we want," said Autumn Leva, spokeswoman for Minnesota for Marriage. "A vote on a marriage amendment to the constitution is very different than actually voting to redefine our marriage laws."

Minnesota for Marriage on Thursday brought in an English professor from California who has written about the need for children to have a mother and father.

"I'm here because I'm fighting for children's rights," said Robert Lopez, a bisexual married father who was raised by a lesbians. He met with journalists and lawmakers Thursday.

"In civil terms, in cultural terms, in social terms, in religious terms, in historical terms -- all of those ways -- having a maternal and a paternal line of descent is a value. And if abstract terms like 'father' and 'mother' didn't matter, we wouldn't be fighting over the abstract term 'marriage,' " Lopez said.

States where same-sex couples can legally wed: Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia.

IN MINNESOTA

In the state's earliest days, marriage laws were written in a way that assumed the union of a man and a woman but didn't spell it out or prohibit any alternative. The 1905 Minnesota statutes laid out the minimum age for men and women to get married and proscribed bigamy, incest and unions among the mentally disabled.

The state Supreme Court affirmed in 1971 that, even though Minnesota law did not specifically prohibit same-sex marriage, it was understood that marriage referred to opposite-sex unions.

In 1977, lawmakers added language to specify that marriage was a civil contract "between a man and a woman."

In 1996, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as only a union of a man and woman and said no state was required to recognize a same-sex marriage recognized by any other state.

In 1997, the Minnesota Legislature amended state statute to include the Defense of Marriage Act provisions. Same-sex unions were also added to the list of "prohibited" marriages, and marriage applications were required to list the sex of each person.